Boral boss wants stronger powers to deal with unions

Boral boss Mike Kane . . . ‘Union officials ought to hold legal obligations equally or more onerous than those of officers of a company,’ he told the Heydon royal commission in a letter.
Photo: Josh Robenstone

“Union officials ought to hold legal obligations equally or more onerous than those of officers of a company," he told the Heydon royal commission in a letter.

Mr Kane said that should include aligning fines under the Fair Work Act with those under the Corporations Act and making union officials criminally liable for breaches. It should be easier to deregister unions, he said.

“A mechanism must exist where government can swiftly invoke deregistration penalties on any union that engages in a pattern of violating the law," he said.

Some of the changes to the duties of union officials are contained in the registered organisations bill, which has stalled in the Senate. The law would establish a specialist regulator for the sector. The fate of that bill, and other workplace changes such as the re-establishment of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, rests largely with the new Senate cross-bench.

The Palmer United Party bloc hasn’t said how it will vote on the bills.

Mr Kane wants the Fair Work Commission and the ABCC given investigative powers similar to corporate regulators.

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Bridget McKenzie, a Nationals MP from Victoria, said on Wednesday the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission was too slow to act on the CFMEU boycott of Boral.

She said there could be merit in adopting the recommendation from the Cole royal commission into the building industry that the ABCC oversee boycotts.

Adelaide University law professor Andrew Stewart said it was an accident of history that the ACCC had responsibility for illegal boycotts, which were essentially an industrial issue. But it was not clear that new laws were needed, because there were court remedies under existing laws that could lead to fines, assets being seized or unions being deregistered, he said.

CFMEU construction division national secretary
Dave Noonan
said it was wrong to compare company directors with union leaders

“I would like to thank him [Mr Kane] for his kind advice, as a visitor to this country, on how the legal system should be structured to the benefit of multinational corporations," he said.

“We don’t have any problem with proper regulation that makes sure trade union officials don’t steal their member’s money; anyone who does that should be dealt with by the law, but you just can’t say an apple is an orange: a union is not a corporation."